About Alder Forest

Alder Forest is the personal site of Eric Marcarelli. I hope you'll find something interesting here.

History

The site as it exists now was started on May 9, 2008. It is a successor to eric.toadscastle.net, which served a similar purpose but was updated rarely and visited less.

The Name

Alder Forest wasn't my first choice for a name, but it was the best name which had a domain available. "Alder" is the name of a type of tree and has no significance beyond that. The name was inspired by Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest house.

Tools and Design

The HTML, PHP, and Javascript for Alder Forest is done by hand in editors such as syn. Graphical editing is done using GIMP.

The blogging software I use on Alder Forest is called Simbl, pronounced as "symbol," and stands for "Simple blog." I created it myself with PHP and Javascript.

I created the layout for the site based on my other site, but the shadow image on the border of the page is borrowed from Wordpress. The tree at the top left is a public domain image.